


death is only a door (this is not the end)

by callunavulgari



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Coda, Episode: s04e12 Smoke & Mirrors, F/M, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Mentioned Stiles Stilinski/Malia Tate, Minor Braeden/Derek Hale, POV Stiles, Spark Stiles Stilinski, Stiles Saves The Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-11
Updated: 2014-09-11
Packaged: 2018-02-16 22:58:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2287610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles has seen Derek dying before. He’s seen him pale from wolfsbane poisoning, seen him with arrows dotting up and down his spine, with a clawed fist through his chest. He’s seen Derek drowning, seen him bleeding, seen him crushed with so much grief that he might as well have been dying.</p><p>The scene is set correctly, but this time the script is wrong. This time, it feels final. No more re-shoots, no more do-overs, it’s opening night and the curtain is closing on tragedy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	death is only a door (this is not the end)

**Author's Note:**

> So. This happened because _that scene_ has not left my head since Monday. Combine my inner _feelings_ with [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgnVK_U85gY), the [tags that I puked all over the place here](http://callunavulgari.tumblr.com/post/97040503375), and [this post](http://hales-emissary.tumblr.com/post/97066755548/fierce-little-red-teenwolf-pack-scott-is) about Scott calling Stiles out on his staring, along with me kind of going what the fuck about how Derek survived in the first place, and this fic was born of tears and lots of sad music.
> 
> Speaking of sad music, the following two songs were listened to pretty much on repeat the entire time I was writing this, so yeah. [This Is Not The End, the Fieldwork Remix](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32eywT-bQhQ) and [Death Is Only a Door from the Cloud Atlas score](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcyxYT-EdnI). Also, technically I was supposed to be putting the finishing touches on my Teen Wolf Rare Pair fic before this spilled out of my brain, so it's very quick and dirty. If anyone notices any glaring mistakes, please point them out, yes?

Stiles has seen Derek dying before. It’s not a new thing, with him. Derek Hale has had more brushes with death than anyone Stiles has even known and probably ever will. He’s even been in full support of Derek dying, at least once or twice, back at the start, when Derek was just the surly asshole that was the root of all their problems — back when he’d actively tried to kill Lydia on a fucking _hunch —_ back when they’d thought he was the one who bit Scott.  
  
A lot has changed since then. They’ve all had their own intimate encounters with death and somewhere along the line, the idea of Derek dying had gone from full support to grudging disappointment and finally, to actual grief. He doesn’t know when it happened, if it was the night that Stiles kept him alive in a pool, his arms around Derek’s waist as his legs got progressively weaker or if it was the time in the hospital, when Stiles had found him in the elevator and worried that this time, he might not actually be able to wake him up.  
  
Stiles knows this scene. He’s lived it. Derek’s lived _through_ it, sometimes thanks to Stiles himself. All the right props are there, the setting is right for it, only this time, it isn’t Stiles crouched over Derek, desperately trying to keep him alive with barbed words and a steady hand.  
  
He doesn’t know Braeden well. He can’t even say that at this moment he knows _Derek_ very well. For all that they’ve gone through together, for all that Stiles knows that Derek bent over backwards to help Scott get the nogitsune out of him, he hasn’t actually _seen_ him. It’s been ages. Hell, his _dad_ has seen more of Derek than he has.  
  
Stiles walked straight into the hunter’s lair for him back in Mexico. He was there for teenage Derek’s bizarre not quite time traveling adventure or whatever the fuck it was. Briefly, he’d helped Derek hold down a thrashing teenage werewolf in Deaton’s office, but there’s a difference between setting eyes on him occasionally and actually _knowing_ what was going on with him.  
  
Derek and death have been a constant for him. Stiles doesn’t know what they are — if they’re reluctant allies or if they’re kind of friends; it’s just that, he doesn’t fucking know. The summer that they spent looking for Erica and Boyd was simultaneously the loneliest and most eye-opening summer of his entire life, because that was the summer that he’d realized Derek Hale was an actual person, with actual real life feelings.  
  
To Derek, pack is everything. Derek, who leaves dirty towels in the hallway to moulder but is obsessive about getting dirty dishes cleaned the moment they hit the sink. Derek, who still loves basketball enough that when Stiles had shown up one night with one in hand, he’d cocked his head and said, “The neighbors have a hoop out back. You wanna?”  
  
Derek, who likes reading more than watching television, but likes watching TV shows more than sitting through an actual movie. Derek, who runs the perimeter of the town every night, just in case.  
  
It’s always been there, between them, that little hook just above his navel. His mom would have called it chemistry, but Stiles doesn’t think it’s quite that. Scott, he knows, would have called it fate, because he’s a hopeless romantic, but it’s not really that either.  
  
They just work well together.  
  
Even before they knew each other — when they outright hated each other — they made a good team. And now, after so many life changing battles and quiet nights spent researching or just talking, he thinks that they might actually _understand_ each other, possibly better than anyone else.  
  
His dad and Scott know Stiles, they know what his favorite cartoons were when he was growing up and how when he was potty training he had a horrible habit of smearing poop all over the walls, but Derek _gets_ him. He doesn’t like it, probably hates it a little bit that he gets Stiles, but he _does_. Stiles knows, because he gets Derek too.  
  
The thing that’s been growing between them since day one should have hit it’s crescendo by now, should have climbed to it’s highest peak, hit the high note, whatever, but it feels like it’s sputtering — it feels like a spark getting snuffed out.  
  
He’s noticed. Of course he has. He noticed when he came back to himself after the nogitsune and couldn’t find Derek in the aftermath. He had bigger concerns, sure, like sleeping for a million years and making sure that no one else had died because of him, but he’d still somehow noticed in all that chaos that Derek wasn’t there.  
  
After that, Derek had been a problem to be set aside for another night. There was the grief from Allison’s loss wrapped tight around everyone like a noose, and Stiles had been busy making sure that they hadn’t come through on the other side only to have someone off themselves in the aftermath. That was more important.  
  
Then there was Malia’s continued presence, which had led to Stiles feeling something a bit more for her than he would have expected.  
  
Stiles hadn’t noticed that Derek was _actually_ gone. Scott had been the one to realize, and Stiles— he didn’t know how he felt about that. Derek had always been his to worry about. Scott hated him outright at first, wouldn’t even think about listening to Derek when they’d first met, and then later, well, they were never friends. It was always Stiles who pushed, who hurled himself onto the edge of Derek’s sinking ship of grief and self loathing and threw a life jacket around his shoulders, because _someone_ had to.  
  
They have history together, stories that Stiles hasn’t even told Scott from that stupid summer; long nights hunched together over books, driving in circles around the town, checking and rechecking the perimeter, eating crappy takeout and pretending that Isaac didn't smell more like Scott than Stiles did.  
  
They’d kissed that summer, just once.  
  
It wasn’t what he’d expected either. Stiles had expected Derek to kiss him the way he threw him around; he’d expected Derek to manhandle him into a door or a wall and kiss him until he bruised. What actually happened was far different.  
  
He’d fallen asleep on Derek’s couch, slumped over a book that was only mostly English and sometime in the middle of the night, he’d woken to Derek standing over him. There had been a soft, fond twist to his mouth, he remembers that the most — more than the fact that Derek was sleep rumpled himself, barefoot with a pair of oversized sweats hanging low on his hips. When Stiles had made some kind of sleepy noise, questioning and confused, Derek had shushed him, guided him with a hand low on his back until Stiles was laying down properly and just looked at him with quiet affection. He remembers thinking that it should have been creepy, having Derek watch him like that, but mostly, Stiles had felt _safe_.  
  
And then Derek had kissed him, leaning over to brush their mouths together, and tucked a blanket around his shoulders, murmuring against Stiles’ lips to go back to sleep.  
  
He had, because he was tired and Derek was warm, and when he’d woken up the next morning, Derek was nowhere to be found, so Stiles had let himself out.  
  
They hadn’t talked about it, but that should have been their crescendo. That should have been it, the hook behind their navels jerking them together effortlessly.  
  
It wasn’t though, and now—  
  
Now, it might be too late.  
  
Stiles has Malia. He doesn’t love her yet, but they’re getting there.  
  
Derek has Braeden. Stiles doesn’t know what Derek feels for her, but judging by the way she’d leapt from the front of the truck, shotgun already aimed and firing, _she_ at least feels something for _him_.  
  
His and Derek's spark is sputtering, the red string of fate unraveling, chemistry fizzling out instead of exploding, and it’s not because of the girls. Even with the girls, they could have been something. Maybe not what they wanted to be, but Derek would have still been _there_.  
  
Stiles has seen Derek dying before. He’s seen him pale from wolfsbane poisoning, seen him with arrows dotting up and down his spine, and with a clawed fist through his chest. He’s seen Derek drowning, seen him bleeding, seen him crushed with so much grief that he might as well have been dying.  
  
The scene is set correctly, but this time the script is wrong. This time, it feels final. No more re-shoots, no more do-overs, it’s opening night and the curtain is closing on tragedy.  
  
“Go!” Derek barks, and distantly, he hears the rustle of fabric that means Malia and Liam are turning away. Everything is fog, even the crunch of their footsteps on gravel, and he can’t look away from Derek, can’t help but think that this is _wrong_ — that this isn’t how the story goes. This isn’t how _they_ end.  
  
He’s always saved Derek and Derek’s always saved him. It’s written into their skins, written into the very fabric of reality; it’s in Scott’s red string of goddamn fate and the spark isn’t going out, because it can’t be, not if he believes hard enough. That’s how it works, isn’t it? Stiles just has to believe; fan the spark into a roaring inferno and believe hard enough to alter the world, if only a little bit.  
  
He’s still not moving, staring at Braeden’s hands covered in Derek’s blood, and then Derek is catching his eye over Braeden’s shoulder.  
  
It’s like the world explodes around him, sound leveling out into nothingness, just white noise. Nothing else exists, nothing, nothing, nothing— not Scott or Kira, not Kate fucking Argent, or the berserkers; the only thing that exists is Derek on the ground, human and _dying_.  
  
He wonders if this is how Scott felt, when Allison died.  
  
“Hey, hey,” Derek murmurs, voice soft and pained. It sounds almost sweet, like Derek’s trying to reassure him that it’ll all be okay, even as he’s bleeding out onto the ground. It’s quiet and agonized and imploring as he looks at Stiles and nods, says, “Save him.”  
  
It feels like an eternity before Stiles can bring himself to move, the shuffle of his feet on gravel so fucking loud. It goes against every single instinct he has, butting heads with the one that’s loudly insisting that he needs to save Scott. Save Scott, he thinks, but what happened to save Derek? What else is he good for, if he can’t save stupid fucking Derek Hale?  
  
He turns away, starts to go, and gets maybe three feet before Derek groans, low and hurt, voice caught on the edge of a sentence; something that might be “I can’t,” or just nonsensical words that his brain is coughing up. He stops, feet skidding on the loose rocks, and hears the gurgle of blood in Derek’s lungs, can see the blood on his teeth in his mind’s eye.  
  
He turns again, because he’s helpless not to, his brain flashing through all the many, varied times that he’s seen Derek broken and bleeding and thought he was down for the count.  
  
Derek’s hands are clenching and unclenching reflexively, white-knuckled and trembling, stained red, and it’s wrong— so fucking wrong. This can’t be the last time that he sees Derek Hale alive. He’s come a long way from wanting the man dead, but this is the first time that Stiles has looked at him and it’s felt _final_ enough for him to even think the words, _I don’t want him to. I don’t want him to die._  
  
He stares, throat working. They’re not anything to each other. At worst, reluctant allies. At best, reluctant _friends_ , but— they should have been more. They _could_ have been more.  
  
They could have been fantastic.  
  
Braeden’s hands press against the wound, holding it tight, and Derek whines, high-pitched and hurt, and everything aches.  
  
The spark, their spark, is sputtering out, and _that’s not how this story goes_.  
  
Stiles doesn’t think of all the things that he wants to say to Derek in this moment. Doesn’t think about how he wants to yell at him, doesn’t think about asking, “What about Cora? What about your sister? She can’t lose you again.”  
  
He doesn’t think about pressing in close and taking Braeden’s spot at Derek’s side or laughing through tears, doesn’t think about _finally_ asking what that fucking kiss was all about.  
  
He’ll do all that later, Stiles thinks, setting his jaw.  
  
Believe, Deaton had said.  
  
If there’s one thing that Stiles is good at, other than filling the shoes of the boy who _literally_ cried wolf, it’s believing.  
  
This isn’t how the story goes. Derek isn’t going to die here, he’s going to get better, he’s going to _evolve_. Derek’s going to live, because they haven’t reached their crescendo yet, whatever it’s meant to be.  
  
This is not the end, he thinks, every fiber of his being straining towards that fading spark. He imagines himself fanning the flame, about bringing it close to his chest and breathing it back to life.  
  
 _This is not the end_ , Stiles thinks, and finally turns to go, belief setting his veins on fire. He’ll find Scott and Kira, the pack will save them, and maybe kill Kate for good, and when he gets back out of that hellhole of a church, Derek is going to be _alive_.  
  
.  
  
The sun is already up by the time they get out of the temple. It’s bright, after the dank, horrible darkness of the church, but it feels a little bit like hope on his shoulders. It feels like something new, something huge, one giant metaphor for coming out of the darkness and into the light.  
  
Stiles hasn’t let his belief waver since he walked away from Derek and Braeden, but stepping outside, as warm and inviting as it is, is terrifying. For the first time, that belief falters, because what if it _wasn’t_ enough? What if the curtains are closed, the spark extinguished for good? What if?  
  
When he sees Derek, his shoulders sag with relief, and he can’t help but stare.  
  
He doesn’t know what the fuck his scent is doing, if it’s his heart pounding away jackrabbit fast or if Scott’s just that in tune with him, but Scott turns to him, a question written across his face. Stiles lets his lip twitch up into a smile and shakes his head. Not now, he thinks. Let me have this.  
  
Because Derek’s alive. The story didn’t end. The spark didn’t go out. This is not the end of Derek — not the end of _them_  — because they haven’t reached their crescendo yet.  
  
Relationships don’t always last forever. Malia could break up with him in a week and go back to living as a coyote. Braeden could disappear on a job and never come back. Maybe that won’t happen — maybe Derek and Braeden are forever, maybe him and Malia will fall hopelessly in love. Maybe him and Derek will always remain as something that could have happened. Maybe they’ll become good friends and it won’t matter that when Stiles looks at him, he feels a tug of _something_ just above his navel, because they’ll be happy anyway.  
  
They have the time to figure it out now.  
  
The curtain didn’t drop; the show goes on.  
  
Maybe it’ll happen in a couple months. Stiles might die on the way home in a freak accident. Derek might get shot in the head before Stiles can get to him. With the way things are going in Beacon Hills, the whole damn place might just get nuked one day.  
  
But that day is not today. Today is a day for coming out of the darkness and into the light, a day for small smiles, rekindled sparks, for celebration. The bad guys are taken care of and no one died.  
  
Draw the curtains and get some fucking snacks, because today is just the intermission.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Come visit me on tumblr where we can cry together about the finale and goddamn stupid Sterek, forever ruining our lives. My [writing blog](http://callunawrites.tumblr.com/) and [my primary one](http://callunavulgari.tumblr.com/).


End file.
